Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

John Stuart Dowie - Soldier Artist Sculptor (1915-2008)

John was a noted painter and sculptor who left many public and private commissions throughout Adelaide and Australia.

The son of Gertrude and Charles,  he had three siblings, David, Donald, and Jean.  He attended Rose Park Primary School and later Adelaide University.

John Dowie served in the Army in WW2, in Middle East, New Guinea, and Australia.  Of his siblings, David was a Captain in the 2/9 Army Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers, and Donald a Flight Lieutenant in No 1 Squadron RAAF.

He studied at the South Australian School of Art, where two of his greatest influences were the teachers Marie Tuck and Ivor Hele. Ivor Hele would later prove to be one of Australias most prominent war artists. John would study architecture at Adelaide university by day and take art classes at night. 

Attending Stow Church (now Pilgrim) he was was made aware of the anti-semite movement by his congregational minister, who was corresponding with an incarcerated minister in Dachau.

"When I enlisted in the Army I knew why I was enlisting well enough and had no good reason to change my mind the whole time"

John was a "Rat of Tobruk" servbing with the 2nd/43rd Battalion in the 9th Division.

"Six weeks of busy nights and watchful days had passed during which I managed no more than three hours sleep in twenty four. Young men can stand a lot and, not withstanding all of this we were fit and in good heart."

Involved in the August 1941 offensive, it was after a particularly heavy artillery barrage which he described as making the noise of nearby machine guns seem faint, an informal truce occurred to allow both sides to retrieve their casualties.

There was a certain type of humour he described. "I remember in Tobruk at a grave disadvantage, being seated on a thunderbox, having Italian grenades tossed at me.  It was just a boyish prank, purely for a laugh, but the grenades were not toys."

Later working in the Military History Unit, and at times as an assistant to official war artist Lyndon Dadswell, John was still able to exhibit occasionally, and in 1941 and 1944 entered paintings including some war pictures in the Royal South Australian Society of Arts exhibition.

An avid snow skier and writer, he created over fifty public sculptures and travelled extensively overseas. During the 90s he exhibited regularly at the Kensington Rd. Gallery of Susan Sideris.  John was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1981 for service to the arts as a sculptor and painter.

He passed away after a stroke in 2008, aged 93 years old.

Quotes and other references from John Dowie A Life In the Round by Tracey Lock-Weir